“Is There Any Real Benefit In Marriage For Women?”: 50 Honest Answers People Didn’t Hold Back On

It does not sound marriage is benefitting you very much. Maybe the relationship has run it's course.

I tried to enlighten my ex husband about the mental load and he continued to try to gaslight me. Not only did he resist taking on more chores, but he also did nothing to show appreciation for the overwhelming amount of household work I did.

But now that we are divorced, life is SO much easier and I am very, very happy. I tried dating a bit but am struggling to find someone who will be a 50/50 partner.

I've found a group of women in my same shoes and we support each other.

To me there are things you’ve said here that in my own life I experience and am good with, and other things you’ve said here feel like things to examine a bit.

What I’m good with in my own life, after 25 years of marriage - a shift to a companionship way of life. I’m even good with the slowdown in the intimate life (perimenopause had its impact on me). I do most of the mental labor in our household because I was always the one managing home/kid/meals/chores and usually that’s okay with me, as long as he is capable of stepping in to support where needed.

What I’m not good with in my own life - feeling unseen, wanting to run away, fantasizing about him finding someone else so I can go live a better life on my own. These are your red flags. I have felt this way and this is a problem. It is a sign of something brewing underneath. We had to do some major work on this one.

I don’t have big profound advice really. I had to get crystal clear on what I wanted and needed. For me it was to better define what we needed to do as a couple to galvanize us a little more. We needed to connect as us, and not only as parents or problem-solvers. It also meant I needed to define myself again in my late 40s and figure out what I needed to do to live the life I wanted to live. I didn’t need to leave and go live on my own - that would cost me my life’s companion and I didn’t want that. I like being married. I like having my person to do life with. Ups and downs and imperfections all around. The benefits outweigh the costs for me.

I did need to find new outlets for myself - my own goals and hobbies and self-care and things that got me in touch with me again after a long season of spending most of my energy on other people.

This is just my take as someone who really identifies with a lot of what you said. Wishing you all the best.

I relate to this entirely, down to the fantasies and the glaringly one-sided marriage benefits. I still have 4 kids at home, and it's infinitely better now that he's out of the picture. I have never lived alone before, having gone straight from my parents' home to being a mother and wife. Just having my own bedroom/bathroom space has elevated my life experience so much. I am still looking forward to living alone someday, but this is still so much better.

My husband is my ultimate companion and support. He treats me like a queen and we work as a team to raise our family and look forward to retirement when we can spend more time together doing the things we love. We have a special needs daughter and I would not trade seeing her eyes light up when she sees her dad for anything in the world. I only hope that I can be as good to him as he is to me.

First, I have so much sympathy for you. Feeling unseen and actively wishing for your husband to find “some young thing” is so REAL, and I applaud your honesty and your vulnerability. I think it’s so important for women to tell the truth to one another, and that younger women could benefit from hearing these stories as a counterpoint to the cultural lies we are sold as “normal”.

Secondly, my experience differs from yours in a few major factors, particularly that I didn’t have children, which is an enormous shift in how a relationship runs. When I was younger, I observed that in my culture and community (socio-economic, etc) I did not see many examples of women who were able to balance both raising children and happy marriages, it really seemed like an either/or proposition. One could have a happy marriage or happy kids, but typically not both. I didn’t want to risk raising kids on my own, I knew that was not for me, so I chose a man who was not particularly interested in children either. So def take my words with a hearty helping of salt. We are also not religious, and my husband is openly feminist and does not subscribe to patriarchal expectations.

So that said, I do want to answer your question earnestly: what benefits do I get in marriage? For me it’s about long-term intimacy and a carefully constructed, deliberate support system. I value having someone who has known and cared about me for so long, through multiple phases of life. I value the “shared memory” part of our lives, the way we bear witness to what happens in our families and our world. I like having him there when I go through tough things: losing people I love, dealing with health issues, listening to me vent as I weather the storms of my career challenges, rooting for me as I build projects and endeavors I’m proud of. And then doing the same for him: as we grow and develop as people, we have cheerleaders and support systems. When problems come up, we’re not alone in dealing with them, we have someone to puzzle it out aloud, to strategize and brainstorm. That’s what I would say I value most, and why I continue to prioritize my own husband and marriage in my life. This long term trust and side-by-side teamwork approach to life grows even more valuable to me with time.

But I understand that is not everyone’s experience, and I know how rare it is and also how much work it takes to maintain this through many decades.

It depends 100% on your partner. I married in my 20s to a man who was super fun, smart, and interesting. It was a hard marriage- infidelity, infertility, poor conflict resolution skills on both our parts, he wanted to have his own business but didn’t have the skill set. I was the breadwinner and the housework doer. From my perspective now I can’t believe I didn’t divorce him! But I was attached, he was handsome and charismatic and he worked hard to learn how be a good person, and I loved him. Then he died of cancer in his mid-40s.

After he died, I grieved him deeply, but also my life got SO much easier. I thrived at work and loved living alone.

After about 5 years I was set up with a guy through mutual friends and it’s such a different thing being with him. We’re just more compatible in the ways that matter to me now. He’s had much more time to work on himself than my late sweetie ever got, and he did the work, and it shows. We can talk about hard things. He pulls his weight. We’re more s*xually compatible- he taught me what it feels like to have s*x with someone who’s capable of really tuning in to their partner and whose ego isn’t involved, and wow is that better. And since we’re both introverts, he doesn’t need me to pay attention to him every waking moment.

So I married him at 56, and it’s great. He gives me more than he costs me.

This is really funny ! That’s a bit what I was going through unconsciously… and indeed a few weeks ago he told me he had cheated on me and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to jump out of this marriage ! I’ve been feeling great since 😇 of course I was quite angry at the way he treated me (lying like crazy for months and now saying that he thought I was going to fight more for our wedding…) but I have not missed him at all or the life we had together !!

Apparently I’m the only one who wants to say that women can, in fact, benefit. For perspective, I’m 44 and been married for 19 1/2 years.

I am not the primary breadwinner. But because I have support, I can pursue a job that has meaning to me and keeps me healthy. I got sick a LOT when I worked normal forty hours. Now I work part time and get to put my health first.

Also, not all men are the same. Mine cooks half the meals, he does the dishes every day, takes the trash out, fixes stuff etc. he’s a great father and has definitely seen things about our kiddo that I didn’t(and vice versa), so we absolutely are better off together than solo parenting.

I’m not saying we are perfect. The romance fluctuates. I do get tired of compromising and sometimes day dream about having everything my way. I like his work trips because I get a little taste without losing the good stuff. I take my own work related trips(continued Ed) so I can have new experiences . We have separate hobbies but have time we make for each other.

I feel like the real answer is “it depends.” It depends on how well the couple is matched, whether both people are putting effort into both the relationship and the life they built together. It depends on how they treat each other. I have respect for any woman who is happy being independent and any woman strong enough to get out of a bad situation. But don’t think that married women aren’t also capable of being happy.

Women benefit from community. It is exceptionally rare a husband offers the relationship, support, and caring a community does.

I’ve done the married thing and it is no benefit to a woman who is educated and capable.